Recalling a Friendship
2008; University of Chicago Press; Volume: 53; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2327-5804
Autores Tópico(s)Counseling, Therapy, and Family Dynamics
ResumoI met Barbara Guest because we were both seeing same psychiatrist in New York, Dr. Charles Richards. Unprofessionally, he thought we should know each other, so I called her and she invited me to dinner in her apartment on 94th Street. She served cold trout in aspic and I was dazzled by her urbanity and loveliness. She had recently published Turler Losses and her biography of H.D. was almost done. At one point, I remember, she decided not to wash her hair until it was finished. This was around 1980. She rented a small penthouse nearby to write in. She told me, once on her walk there, a man had exclaimed about her beauty and given her a dollar. I remember being invited to her apartment to have tea with her friend Jimmy Schuyler. He spoke little and his lips moved constantly. She told me, when her friend great architect Frederick Keisler came to visit, he brought a cooked chicken for her and doorman sent him to service elevator. I learned that in Paris, it was customary to combine dress fittings with romantic assignations. When I asked her about her early friendship with Henry Miller she said, oh yes, his boyfriend was in love with my boyfriend. Once she hailed a taxi and Marianne Moore, whom she didn't know, asked driver to pick her up. Even though she was so sensitive, volatile and unworldly, I want to mention a physical toughness that I attribute to growing up in California and to swimming--in California, Miami, Southampton. When she suffered a concussion in a mugging on stairs of her studio in late 80s, I remember she went right back to work there and was bored talking about this subject. When her husband Trumbull died, she sold her apartment and moved everything to Berkeley in a few months, and immediately began her late great work. She loved to read travel writing, and both her husbands were travelers. At same time traveling was a lot of trouble and anxiety for her. I remember I went to say goodbye before one trip to Europe and was impressed by her calmness, organization, and readiness. She boarded plane in Newark, got off, and returned home to write. Once she and Trumbull started out for Egypt, but she turned around at airport and came home to write wonderful poem, Egypt. I thought of her as secondary in mode. She transmuted secondary, read or heard, experiences into major poetry--a postcard, a travel book, a poster of unicorn tapestries, an anecdote from a Picasso biography, her friends' adventures. When Barbara showed me a poem, it was straight, with humility, at a stage before final polish, where a reader could still make a contribution. We read each other's work for about fifteen years, from 1980 to 1995. It was a great creative period for her. There was no prelude, no indication of what she was writing before she handed a poem to me, sometimes two or four poems in a week. An Emphasis Falls on Reality, The Rose Marble Table, The Screen of Distance, Dissonance, Royal Traveler. These poems were often deeper and greater than my comprehension, and yet somehow I could apprehend them by instinct and I could make suggestions about little things. I wrote poems in Empathy, Sphericity, and Four Year Old Girl. illumination of her attention inspired me. She helped me not to include every step in an argument. I helped her to drop word the when it interrupted music. I continue to feel that I don't fully comprehend genius of her poems, but I was devoted to her poetry and to our conversation. I don't think power of her work can be held still in memory, and each time I read or hear a poem, I'm surprised and enamored by its power in present time. …
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